St. Landry democrat. (Opelousas, La.) 1878-1894, 1887-07-02
GOING TO MARKET.
Whv Does Not the American Woman Do
Her Own Marketing?
Copyrighted, 1ss7.1
BY JENNY JUNE.


or at home. in which it may be situated. 1t
tells more of the home life, the habits of the
people. how they live, than any other one
domestic institution, because 1t is the grown
and DEVELOPMENT of those habits, and gar
ners the best of the old, with the inevitable
accretion of the new, in its social, material
characteristics
One of the finest bits of descriptive writing
which Mrs. Ann S. Stephens ever achieved
was her color picture of Washington market
in "Fashion and Famine" and great artists
have found inspiration in the delicate green
of lettuce, contrasted with the red OF the
common radish, in the apotheosis of the cab
baee found in the caulitower, and the con-
junction of these with other things as pretty
and suggestive upon the market-woman's
stall.
You can always tell by the appearance of
a market whether the ladies of town do
their own marketing to an appreciate ex-
;ent, or whether they leave it to be done by
servants or men. If it is the habit of ladies
to go to market, an air of neatness and re-
fnement grows up about it. The approaches
are kept in better condition, the walks
cleaner, the meats are cut up with greater
nicety. the vegetables and fruits are bet
ter prepared and arranged with an eye
to effect, and the whole ensemble
made more attractive. This care, clean
illness and eye for color is a feature of
the English markets, where there is great
middle class, intelligent and generally well
to do, the women belonging to which do
their own marketing. There is nothing
like the wealth of resource that we possess
in this country, no beauty of tasseled corn,
barely the glimpse of the rich red tomato,
but they make up by the pretty arrangement
of fruits, and the contrast of innumerable
"posies'' made of pretty garden pinks, sweet
brier and roses.
When flowers are brought to our mar
kets, at least to those in New York city,
they are usually big, common and vulgar
looking, and are so treated so thrown about,
bruised and neglected that in a short time
they are worthless and the gutter becomes
their portion. The English and continental
markets make a feature of beautiful flowers.
For few pence, sous or pfennig one can
procure at the markets in England, France
or Germany bouquet of flowers that we
in America should have to obtain at an
expensive florists, and for which we should
have to pay 81. In England particularly,
posies, and posy bouquets of choice flowers,
are procurable everywhere, threepence or
at most sixpence being the charge for roses
or carnations, arranged with mignonette or
maidenhair fern.
The market in England is a time-honored
institution. The "market-cross," few
specimens of which still remain, was the
great gathering place for all who had wares
to sell. The upper part of the structure was
the original courthouse; in the hollow be-
meath shoes and jackets were sold in COM
mon with fresh eggs and pats of leaf-stained
butter or butter nodded in bricks. The
cries of these and hundreds of other wares
resounded in what would be now deafening
manner. But in those days there was no
noise of locomotives and less of machinery,
and the human voice had more chance. The
constant roar of inanimate objects IN these
modern days is making of us silent people.
On the continent, except in Paris, the mar
kets are less clean than in England, but they
are very interesting. I shall never forget
looking out upon the market-platz from the
window of the breakfast-room in the "Gold-
ener Stern" Golden Starr at Bonn. 1t was
my first glimpse of such a scene, and caught
it at its best. The women had unloaded
their fruits and vegetables, and were grouped
about their stalls and wares, all wearing the
short home-spun skirt, the blue or checked
linen apron, the kerchief crossed upon the
breast, and few the picturesque head-dress
or cap of their district; but these are fast dis
appearing. Poor as these women are, there's
neither rags nor dirt. They are generally
clean and comfortably clothed and with
thick stockings and stout sabots. Between
times Of waiting upon. customers they knit
knit-knit; they are never idle, and spend
little time in gossiping, hardly enough to
acquire vocabulary. They brought their
wares in baskets, hampers, or hutches upon
their heads or backs sometimes in
credible distances, though now they use the
cars; still they often walk miles to reach
them, and miles after leaving them; and
charge SO little for fruit and vegetables that
one marvels where the pay for time and
labor and wear and tear of mind and body
and clothing comes in.
Breakfast at a continental hotel is slight
affair. 1t consists of rolls, butter, delicious
SOAICC 0AAN SAAiAu poto VI C"loo AOACy' tiC
rolls are in several varieties, and occupy
pretty open trays, or baskets, and the butteris
rs sweet as roses, but Americans generally
complain bitterly of the difficulty of getting
decent breakfast, though they often end
Dy adopting the coffee and roll plan and
midday breakfast (hot) instead of their own
early heavy breakfast and starvation
lunch. It was common practice for
the ladies stopping at the Goldener
Stern to supplement their breakfast
with fresh fruit from the market. For
this purpose they provided little twig or
wicker baskets, and for from ten to twenty
pfennig filled them with delicious cher
ries, red and white currants, or berries
later, it would be plums and pears and
grapes. 1t takes five pfennig to make cent,
soft may be imagined that the most moder-
ate resources were not very soon exhausted
by this indulgence. The small fruits were
often not more than ten pfennig two cents)
per pound, and the quantity one would re-
ceive for this small sum was astonishing.
It was constant source of amusement to
watch operations, to see the good haus-fraus
with their small covered baskets laboriousIy
inspecting and thrifty beating down.
from what seemed to Americans miracu-
lousy low prices. Then the comparatively
small quantities purchased and the neatness